


Becoming Real

by ExyEimi (Siyah_Kedi)



Series: Real [2]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: M/M, Why didn't anyone stop me?, i need to sleep, not write unnecessary POV sequels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-18
Updated: 2018-07-18
Packaged: 2019-06-12 08:15:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15335649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siyah_Kedi/pseuds/ExyEimi
Summary: "Being Real" from Andrew's POV.





	Becoming Real

He's speeding; just a little. Five miles over the posted limit, because Nicky is drunk and needs a ride home. He sees the boy jump out, running like the hounds of hell are after him, about a split second before they collide. The entire car shakes with impact, and he's treated to the sight of a body rolling up his hood and into his windscreen. He slams on the brakes, too late. The body rolls backwards and strikes the ground. He shoots off a text to Nicky.

 

:: _ I just hit someone, find another ride. _ :: 

 

Then calls 911. There's not much blood when he gets out and kneels down beside the boy, and he's almost relieved. There's a sizeable dent in his hood, though. It's a secondary concern. He gives his location and the nature of his emergency to the lady who answers his call, and examines the boy. It's Aaron who knows about medical emergencies, but he's looked through enough of Aaron's books to know that the boy is alive, and he's going to have the mother of all headaches, if the bruising already blooming on his face is anything to go by. He doesn't touch beyond checking for a pulse, and his relief is increased when he finds one. His phone is buzzing with the notification of Nicky's probably-frantic desire for more information. He ignores it, listening for the sound of sirens. The boy is dressed in clothes that are too large for his slender frame, and he's clutching a rose. 

 

The ambulance arrives quickly, and is followed by the police. He gives his statement, but it was clearly an accident and so he's not in trouble. The boy is packed off to the hospital, and he's left with the vision of a single red rose glowing in the soft light of his headlight. 

 

* * *

 

With his car in the shop to repair the damage, he walks to the coffee shop to get his morning doughnut and coffee. He ignores Aaron's sly comments about conforming to stereotypes, wanting to be a cop and scarfing doughnuts.

 

He senses the spirit before he sees it; an inky darkness on the otherwise sunny street. They usually don't bother him, caught up in their own personal griefs and regrets, so he's nearly a block down the street before he recognizes that the spirit is still behind him. 

 

“Stop following me,” he orders it, and catches a burst of confusion and alarm from the spirit before it vanishes from his senses. Ghosts tend to hang around the place where they died, or places that held emotional significance for them in life, and it doesn't take more than a second for him to realize what's significant about that particular street. 

 

An icy chill washes through him, and he's struck by the desire to  _ know _ . Did the boy live? 

 

Has he killed someone? 

 

* * *

 

The hospital lets him into the room with no real concern. No one has come to identify the boy, and he wasn't carrying a wallet or any identification. The name on the door and the charts at the end of the bed says “John Doe.” 

 

He almost laughs. They match. He'd spent his formative years as Andrew Doe. The kid doesn't look like a John, though, with badly dyed brown hair. The paper says he has blue eyes, but was wearing contacts. 

 

_ Maybe Alex, _ he decides, looking at the immobile face. He's still skimming the paperwork. Under “identifying marks” is an entire paragraph’s worth of scrawled words. Under the floral hospital gown, this kid is covered in scars. Idly, he wonders why a kid was running from a flower shop, carrying a single rose. He doesn't look old enough to have had a sweetheart who needed wooing. It's a puzzle, and Andrew lives for puzzles. 

 

The steady throb of the heart monitor tells him the kid is alive, but the most recent note, added to the paper in a hasty scrawl, says he hasn't woken up since arriving. EEG results suggests a coma, resulting from swelling in the brain following blunt force trauma to the head. From hitting either the hood of his car or the cement, Andrew guesses, and winces internally. He sees the empty hands, remembers the rose, and resolves that he'll wake up with one to make up for it. 

 

He finds a florist in the hospital gift shop, and brings a single rose back to Doe's room, tucking it into his slender hand and curling fine-boned fingers around the stem. His skin tingles from the contact.

 

* * *

 

He's coming back from getting his morning doughnut when he senses the spirit again. He's fairly sure it's not the kid; Alex is still alive, after all, just deeply unconscious. But there's something familiar about this spirit, and after a moment, when he sees it trailing behind him, he knows for sure. No other spirit has ever followed him around like a lost puppy before. 

 

“You again?” His lip curls and he can feel dried chocolate at the corner of his mouth. “Go away,” he tells the spirit. It ignores him, actually  _ approaching _ him. “I said leave me alone.” Usually spirits will go away once they're acknowledged and commanded. He's picking up confusion and wariness, and sacrifices his doughnut to make his point inescapably clear, tossing it straight through the curious specter. “Fuck  _ off _ ,” he demands, and it finally obeys, disappearing from both sight and psychic senses.  _ Waste of a good doughnut, _ he laments to himself, and turns toward his apartment. 

 

He hasn't gotten more than two feet into the door when he recognizes the feeling of a spirit. Recognizes  _ this _ spirit in particular.

 

“Seriously?” 

 

He feels a flood of confusion, stronger than anything he's felt before. “Can't you find someone else to haunt?” 

 

The confusion increases like a flood, and he's almost getting words. It suddenly becomes clear; the ghost doesn't know he's dead. “Fantastic.” The sarcasm rolls out heavily. “Of all the ghosts in the world, I get the stupid one.”

 

Confusion, then understanding, and finally terror from the spirit. He can feel his own heart rate speed up in a sympathy-spike of adrenaline. 

 

“Life sucks and then you die,” he advises the spirit, adding, “And apparently that sucks too.” There's always the chance of reincarnation, though. “Better luck next time,” he says. 

 

“Fuck you.” Clear as day, the words hang in the air long after the spirit has vanished. It's a male voice, but unfamiliar. He can't decide if he's relieved or not that he doesn't recognize the voice. 

 

After fixing himself a cup of coffee, he figures that if he's going to be haunted, he may as well find out as much as he can. He texts Nicky to bring over some of the books on the occult his cousin collects. Nicky has, for reasons unknown, always been jealous of Andrew and Aaron's ability to sense spirits. Feeling restless and a little concerned - the voice had been young, just like the kid he hit - he finds himself standing in the hospital gift shop, buying another rose. In the hospital room, the monitor steadily proclaims that the kid is still alive, still comatose.

 

* * *

 

Nicky brings the books while he's on the way to visit the kid again. They catch up briefly, and Andrew continues to the hospital. It's been two months since the accident, and he can't bring himself to drive his car. Not until he knows for sure that he didn't kill the kid. 

 

Looking down at the slumbering body, he recalls that he heard coma patients respond to being spoken to occasionally. At least it'll give him something to listen to that's not the endless beeping of machines. 

 

The last rose he brought has died, withering to a dull brown, and he throws it away before replacing it with a fresh one from the florist downstairs. 

 

“They're calling you John Doe,” Andrew informs the body. “I wish I knew your real name so I could apologize properly. I never forget anything, but I can't remember if it was my fault for not seeing you, or yours for dashing out in front of my car like that.”

 

He doesn't say,  _ I hate you for scaring me. I hate that you won't open your eyes and tell me your name.  _ “Doe and Doe,” he adds. “It's almost funny.”

 

He becomes aware that he's not alone, and recognizes the feeling of the spirit lurking behind him. It's been a few days since he's seen or heard from the ghost. He tells himself it's not relief that he feels upon sensing him now. 

“Figures you'd be here too,” he mutters. There's no response. “Not talking today?”

 

Frustration and irritation wash through him, foreign and cold. It's annoying that there are two ghosts in his life and he doesn't have a name for either of them. “Do you have a name, at least?” He asks, not expecting an answer. More frustration courses through Andrew, coming from the spirit. “Maybe a Ouija board,” Andrew muses. It's worth a try. 

 

“Why-” 

 

The voice is familiar, but the spirit seems to have surprised himself. 

 

“Why what?” Andrew prompts him. He gets no answer, and a moment later, the spirit is gone. Tired of their one-sided 'conversations’, Andrew finds a warding spell in one of Nicky's books and sets them in backwards so the spirit can get in, but not out. He doesn't know how to summon him - not without a name - and decides that's his next plan of action. It takes him a week to track down a Ouija board, and he's vaguely aware that the spirit has been hanging around, unable to leave, but for the most part, it's been staying out of his way. 

 

When he finally gets the board, he finds the spirit 'looking’ down at his mattress. It's not corporeal, so he's not sure where the impression comes from, but it's solid and defined in his mind. 

 

“Something wrong with my bed, Goldilocks?” he drawls.  The spirit registers surprise and consternation before edging out of the room. Andrew follows him and settles on the floor of his sitting room, pulling the board out of it's box and explaining its purpose. He watches as the spirit acclimates to it, wondering what it looks like to the ghost. 

 

The planchette moves to Yes, signalling that he's ready. Andrew allows himself a fierce satisfaction, and asks the question he's been sitting on for weeks. 

 

“What's your name?”

 

He can  _ feel _ the concentration pouring off the spirit. 

 

I-D-O-N-T-K-N-O-W

 

Bullshit, Andrew thinks. He lets it slide. “Why are you following me around?” Is the next thing he wants to know. 

 

N-O-T

 

Bullshit, he thinks again. “You are.” 

 

N-O-T, is the repeated answer. Y-O-U-E-V-E-R-Y-W-H-E-R-E-I-G-O

 

The planchette spins wildly, and Andrew can feel the pleasure from the spirit as he toys with it. “Stop that,” he says, but it's more of a suggestion than an order. 

 

F-U-C-K-Y-O-U

 

Feisty. Andrew feels his lips twitch in something that wants to be a smile, and controls his expression. The laugh escapes anyway. The planchette goes spinning off onto the carpet as the spirit gives it a push, and a moment later, it returns to its place on the board. It's a little eerie, seeing the planchette move on it's own. Andrew is arrested by the sight of a small boy - a teenager, actually, just short and slender and somehow familiar - bending over the board, concentrating on the planchette. Their eyes meet across the game board, and the world around him turns grey, the color leached out of everything as if someone turned the saturation down on the world. The only color he can see is the radiant, sapphire-blue eyes. 

 

Sheer panic overwhelms him, and the spirit is fleeing, striking the barrier of his wards repeatedly until Andrew feels them break under the onslaught and the spirit vanishes. 

 

It's baffling.  _ Why would that scare him away? _

 

But it solves another mystery. Tousled dark hair and blue, blue eyes… 

 

* * *

 

He finds himself at the hospital with no memory of having walked over. He replaces the rose in the boy's hand, wondering again why he had one in the first place. 

 

“I'm thinking you're the one who's been following me around,” he tells the boy. “Not dead after all, but some kind of out of body experience? It's getting annoying. You need to wake up and tell me your name.”

 

Eyelashes breaking against the pale cheek stir, and Andrew is faced with those impossible blue eyes for the second time that day. Emotions crash through him too quickly for him to hold onto just one: bewilderment that ordering the kid to wake up worked, resentment that the kid made him feel like this, enchantment that his eyes are so gorgeous…

 

Lips move, and his voice breaks. “Neil,” the kid whispers. 

 

_ Neil. _ It suits him. A lot more than John, or even Alex. Andrew watches as he raises one hand and looks at it like he never seen his own fingers before. Part of him thinks he should go get the nurse, let her know that the kid - Neil - is awake at last. The rest of him can't bear to let him out of his sight, half-afraid that he'll slip back into a coma or simply disappear. 

 

“Your name is Neil?” he asks, more to keep Neil with him than for any other reason. 

 

“It is now,” the kid replies. An odd answer, but fitting somehow. Andrew thinks about the lack of an ID card, the fear on his face before he was struck, the fact that he'd been looking over his shoulder when he ran into Andrew's car. He thinks about the scars littering that scrawny body, and wonders if he has anywhere to go. 

 

Movement draws his attention back to Neil, and he finds the kid staring at the rose he bought. 

 

“This is yours,” Neil tells him. Andrew takes it, staring into cerulean eyes. 

 

“Blue,” he says, and wonders if he can find sheets that'll match for the bed he's going to set up in his spare room. 

  
“Fuck you,” Neil replies, but he's smiling -  _ Idiot _ \- and Andrew’s smiling back. 


End file.
